Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Meets With LGBT Rights Groups Over Transgender Student Rights

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos today met with three LGBT rights groups to discuss the Trump administration’s revocation of Obama’s guidelines on transgender student protections. Chris Johnson reports at the Washington Blade:

Stephanie White, executive director of Equality Michigan, said her organization sought out the meeting to convey the “profound negative consequences” of the withdrawal of the guidance protecting transgender students.

“We also ensured that the secretary heard from transgender students and their parents directly about the impact of discrimination and harassment at school,” White said. “We wanted her to understand that these are life and death issues for transgender young people across the country and that we will not waver or compromise in our commitment to ensuring that every student, regardless of their gender identity, is provided with equal protection and opportunity to thrive.”

The meeting, [Transgender Equality president Mara] Keisling said, yielded no firm policy commitments. Nonetheless, Keisling said it was “a good first meeting” because “it’s always good when people are willing to sit down and talk, when people are willing to be told that what they did was really bad.”

“Right now, we’re limited in what we can do with the federal government, but this was one thing we could do,” Keisling said. “We could bring families, and that was really the important thing here. I think so many people were just outraged that they took a policy that had taken a decade or more to craft and do the groundwork, and then just threw it out in less a week of Attorney General Sessions being in office. He came into office and immediately started shooting at trans people, and she was only in office a couple weeks more than that.”

DeVos reportedly object to the rescinding of Obama’s guidelines but was ordered by Trump to go along. Hit the link for much more from Johnson’s report.